I have a background in Innovation & Business Information Management and a consuming need to take action and drive social change. I believe that a small group of highly motivated people can identify problems and solve them in collaborative ways.
Lately, I've seen this happening several times in my circle: people having a good idea which was discussed a couple of times, but then abandoned due to lack of commitment, structure, and needed expertise. I also know of early-stage NGOs struggling to find the right fit in terms of skills and to form core teams in order to push their projects forward.
So I'm now exploring whether there's appetite for something I haven't quite found elsewhere: a space where people with early-stage social impact ideas can form small, cross-functional teams to actually develop and potentially launch them together - not just discuss them.
The gap I see: if you have an idea but lack certain skills (technical, operational, domain expertise), it's hard to find collaborators to pressure-test feasibility and build it out. You also need an infrastructure that helps you commit to it, collaborate effectively, and actually move forward. Most platforms are either discussion forums, job boards, or formal accelerators.
I'm thinking of running a pilot session - a virtual meetup where:
- People briefly share very early-stage ideas they would like to explore
- Others share input and skills/expertise they could contribute
- We form small working groups around the most promising ideas
- Teams decide if they want to continue collaborating
Would this interest you? Either as someone with an idea, or someone wanting to contribute skills to social impact work?
Curious for honest feedback - does this fill a real need or am I solving a problem that doesn't exist? If you don't like the idea, please briefly explain why in the comments.
Would really appreciate receiving critical input (whether positive or negative) rather than down/upvotes only. Thank you!
This is a worthwhile idea and I appreciate you putting it out there. Team formation and skills matching are real bottlenecks. That said, for ideas that fall outside established EA cause areas or existing frameworks, the bigger bottleneck is often upstream of team formation: getting even modest funding to explore feasibility in a rigorous way. Volunteer energy and cross-functional collaboration are valuable, but they tend to dissipate without some resource runway. Your model might be even stronger if it included a pathway for connecting promising early-stage ideas to funders willing to back basic exploration, not just to collaborators.
Dear Brad,
Thank you so much for the feedback!
I think that your addition is indeed a great way to incentivize teams and further encourage/facilitate action. This brings other questions I'd like to have your input on: 1) Would you suggest to start right away with a 'full-on' model that includes different parts or to build the idea piece by piece (e.g. start with cross-functional collaboration only, then add pathways to funding, then maybe something else..) as you go? 2) How would you test for market-fit before committing to an idea? Statistics show that around 34% of new initiatives fail because of that.
Thanks again for your support :)